Karmic Relationships: Esoteric Studies - Volume VI

Schmidt Number: S-5834

On-line since: 31st August, 2011

VII

Arnhem,
18th July, 1924

The delay
in arriving yesterday prevented me from speaking to you, as was my
wish, about what has been happening in the Anthroposophical Society
since the Christmas Foundation Meeting at the Goetheanum. As
the purpose and intentions of that Meeting will have become known to
friends through the News Sheet, I propose to speak briefly about the
most important points only and then to continue with more intimate
studies concerning the significance of this Christmas Foundation
Meeting for the Anthroposophical Society.

The
Christmas Meeting was intended to be a fundamental renewal, a
new foundation of the Anthroposophical Society. Up to the time of the
Christmas Foundation Meeting I was always able to make a distinction
between the Anthroposophical Movement and the Anthroposophical
Society. The latter represented as it were the earthly projection of
something that exists in the spiritual worlds in a certain stream of
the spiritual life. What was taught here on the Earth and
communicated as anthroposophical
wisdom — this was the reflection of the stream
flowing in spiritual worlds through the present phase of the
evolution of mankind. The Anthroposophical Society was then a kind of
‘administrative organ’ for the anthroposophical knowledge
flowing through the Anthroposophical Movement.

As time
went on, this did not turn out satisfactorily for the true
cultivation of Anthroposophy. It therefore became necessary that I
myself — until then I had taught Anthroposophy
without having any official connection with
the Anthroposophical Society — should take
over, together with the Dornach Executive, the leadership of the
Anthroposophical Society as such. The Anthroposophical Movement
and the Anthroposophical Society have thereby become one. Since the
Christmas Foundation Meeting in Dornach, the opposite of what went
before must be recognised: no distinction is to be made henceforward
between Anthroposophical Movement and Anthroposophical Society,
for they are now identical. And those who stand by my side as the
Executive at the Goetheanum are to be regarded as a kind of esoteric
Executive. Thus what comes about through this Executive may be
characterised as
‘Anthroposophy in deed and practice,’
whereas formerly it could only be a matter of the administration
of the anthroposophical teachings.

This
means, however, that the whole Anthroposophical Society must
gradually be placed upon a new
basis — a basis which makes it possible for
esotericism to stream through the Society — and the essence of
the Anthroposophical Society in the future will be constituted
by the due response and attitude on the part of those who desire to
be Anthroposophists. This will have to be understood in the General
Anthroposophical Society which henceforward will be an entirely open
Society — so that, as was announced at Christmas, the
Lecture-Courses too will be available for everyone, prefixed by the
clauses laying down a kind of spiritual boundary-line.

The
prosperity and fruitful development of the anthroposophical
cause will depend upon a true understanding of the esoteric trend
which, from now onwards, will be implicit in the Anthroposophical
Movement. Care will be taken to ensure that the Anthroposophical
Society is kept free from bureaucratic and formal administrative
measures and that the sole basis everywhere is
the human element to be cultivated within the Society.
Naturally, the Executive at the Goetheanum will have much to
administer: but the administration will not be the essential. The
essential will be that the Executive at the Goetheanum will act in
this or that matter out of its own initiative. And what the Executive
does, what in many ways it has already begun to do — that will
form the content of the Anthroposophical Society.

Thereby a
great many harmful tendencies that have arisen in the Society
during recent years will be eliminated;
difficulties will be in store for many Members, because all kinds of
institutions, founded out of good-will, as the saying goes, did not
prove equal to what they claimed to be and have really side-tracked
the Anthroposophical Movement. Henceforward the
Anthroposophical Movement will, in the human sense, be that
which flows through the Anthroposophical Society.

The more
deeply this is realised and understood the better it will be for the
Anthroposophical Movement. And I am able to say the
following. — Because that impulse prevailed among
those who gathered at the Goetheanum at Christmas, it has been
possible since then to introduce a quite different note into the
Anthroposophical Movement. And to my deep satisfaction I have found
heartfelt response to this in the different places I have so far been
able to visit. It can be said that what was undertaken at Christmas
was in a certain sense a hazard. For a certain eventuality existed:
because the leadership of the Anthroposophical Society was now
combined with the presentation of the spiritual teachings, those
Powers in the spiritual world who lead the Anthroposophical Movement
might have withdrawn their guiding hands. It may now be said
that this did not happen, but that the contrary is true: these
spiritual Powers are responding with an ever greater measure of
grace, with even greater bounty, to what is streaming through the
Anthroposophical Movement. In a certain sense a pledge has been made
to the spiritual world. This pledge will be unswervingly fulfilled
and it will be seen that in the future things will happen in
accordance with it. And so not only in respect of the
Anthroposophical Movement but also in respect of the Anthroposophical
Society, responsibility is laid upon the Dornach Executive.

I have
only spoken these few preliminary words in order to lead up to
something that it is now possible to say and is of such a nature that
it can become part of the content of the Anthroposophical Movement. I
want to speak about something that has to do with the karma of the
Anthroposophical Society itself.

When we
think to-day of how the Anthroposophical Society exists in the world
as the embodiment of the Anthroposophical Movement, we see a number
of human beings coming together within the Anthroposophical Society.
Any discerning person realises that there are also other human beings
in the world — one finds them everywhere
— whose karma predisposes them to come to the Anthroposophical
Society but, to begin with, something holds them back, they do not
immediately, and in the full sense, find their way into it —
though eventually they will certainly do so, either in this or in the
next incarnation. We must, however, bear the following in mind:
Those human beings who through their karma come to the
Anthroposophical Movement are predestined for this Movement.

Now
everything that happens here in the physical world is foreshadowed in
spiritual worlds. Nothing happens in the physical world that
has not been prepared for spiritually, in the spiritual world. And
this is the significant thing: What is coming to pass here on
the Earth in the twentieth century as the gathering together of a
number of human beings in the Anthroposophical Society, was prepared
for during the first half of the nineteenth century when the souls of
those human beings who are now in incarnation and are coming together
in large numbers, were united in the spiritual realms before they
descended into the physical world. In the spiritual worlds at that
time a kind of cult or ritual was lived through by a number of souls
who were working together — a cult which instigated those longings
that have arisen in the souls of those who now, in their present
incarnations, come to the Anthroposophical Society. And whoever has a
gift for recognising such souls in their bodies, does indeed
recognise them as having worked together with him in the first half
of the nineteenth century, when, in the spiritual world, mighty,
cosmic Imaginations were presented of what I will call
the new Christianity. Up there — as in their bodies now
— the souls were united in order to gather into themselves out
of what I will call the Cosmic Substantiality and the Cosmic Forces,
that which, in mighty pictures, was of cosmic significance. It was
the prelude of what was to become anthroposophical teaching and
practice here on the Earth. By far the majority of the
Anthroposophists who now sit together with one another would be able,
if they perceived this, to say: Yes, we know one another, we
were together in spiritual worlds, and in a super-sensible cult we
experienced mighty, cosmic Imaginations together!

All these
souls had gathered together in the first half of the nineteenth
century in order to prepare for what, on Earth, was to become the
Anthroposophical Movement. In reality it was all a preparation
for what I have often called the ‘stream of Michael,’ which
appeared in the last third of the nineteenth century and is the most
important of all spiritual intervention in the modern phase of human
evolution. The Michael stream — to prepare the ways for
Michael's earthly-heavenly working — such was the task of the
souls who were together in the spiritual world.

These
souls, however, were drawn together by experiences they had
undergone through long, long
ages — through centuries, nay, in many cases
through thousands of years. And among
them two main groups are to be distinguished. The one
group experienced the form of Christianity which during the first
centuries of the Christian era had spread in Southern Europe
and also, to some extent, in Middle Europe. This Christianity
continued to present to its believers a Christ conceived of as
the mighty Divine Messenger who had come down from the Sun to the
Earth in order thereafter to work among men. With greater or less
understanding, Christ was thus pictured by the Christians of the
first centuries as the mighty ‘Sun God.’

But
throughout Christendom at this time the faculty of instinctive
clairvoyance once possessed by men was fading away. Then they could
no longer see in the Sun the great spiritual kingdom at whose centre
the Christ once had His abode. The ancient clairvoyant perception of
the descent of the Christ to the Earth became superseded by mere
tradition — tradition that He had come down from
the Sun to the Earth, uniting Himself with Jesus of Nazareth in the
physical body. The majority of Christians now retained little more
than the concept that once upon a time a Being had lived in Palestine
— Christ Jesus — whose nature now began to be the subject
of controversy. Had this Being been fully God? Or was He both God and
Man and, if so, how was the Divinity related to the Humanity? These
questions, with others arising from them, were the problems and the
causes of strife in the Church Councils. Eventually the mass of the
people had nothing left to them but the Decrees issued by Rome.

There
were, however, among the Christians certain individuals who came more
and more to be regarded as heretics. They still preserved as a living
remembrance the tradition of the Christ as a Being of the Sun. To
them, a Sun Being, by nature foreign to this Earth, was once
incarnate. He descended to existence in this physical, material
world. Until the seventh and eighth centuries these individuals found
themselves placed in conditions which caused them to say: In what is
now making its appearance in the guise of Christianity there is no
longer any real understanding of the nature of the Christ!
These “heretics” became, in effect,
weary of Christianity. There were indeed such souls who in the early
Christian centuries until the seventh and eighth centuries
passed through the gate of death in a mood of weariness in regard to
Christianity. Whether or not they had been in incarnation in the
intervening period, the incarnation of importance for them was that
which occurred in the early Christian centuries. Then, from the
seventh and eighth centuries onwards, they were preparing in the
spiritual world for that great and powerful action of which I told
you when I said that in the first half of the nineteenth century a
kind of cult took place in the super-sensible world. These individuals
participated in this cult and they belong to the one group of souls
who have found their way into the Anthroposophical Society.

The other
group of souls had their last important incarnation in the
latest pre-Christian — not the first Christian —
centuries, and in the ancient Pagan Mysteries prior to Christianity
they had still been able to gaze with clairvoyant vision into
the spiritual world. They had learnt in these ancient Mysteries that
the Christ would come down one day to the Earth. They did not live on
Earth during the early centuries of Christianity but remained in the
super-sensible worlds and only after the seventh century
descended to incarnations of importance. These are souls who, as it
were from the vantage-point of the super-sensible, witnessed the entry
of the Christ into earthly culture and civilisation. They longed for
Christianity. And at the same time they were resolute in a desire to
work actively and vigorously to bring into the world a truly cosmic,
truly spiritual form of Christianity.

These two
groups united with the other souls in that super-sensible cult during
the first half of the nineteenth century. It was like a great cosmic,
spiritual festival, lasting for many decades as a spiritual happening
in the world immediately bordering on the physical. There they
were — the souls who then descended, having
worked together in the super-sensible world to prepare for their next
incarnation on the Earth, those who were weary of Christianity
and those who were yearning for it. Towards the end of the nineteenth
century they descended to incarnation and when they had arrived on
Earth they were ready, having thus made preparation, to come into the
Anthroposophical Society.

All this,
as I have said, had been in course of preparation for many centuries.
Here on the Earth, Christianity had developed in such a way that the
Gospels had gradually come to be interpreted as if they spoke merely
of some kind of abstract
“heights” from which a Being
— Jesus of Nazareth — came down to proclaim the Christ.
Men had no longer any inkling of how the world of stars as the
expression of the Spiritual is connected with the spiritual
life; hence it was also impossible for them to understand what is
signified by saying: Christ, as a divine Sun Hero, came down into
Jesus in order that He might share the destiny of men. It is
precisely those facts of most significance that escape the ordinary
student of history. Above all, there is no understanding of those who
are called “heretics.” Moreover, among the souls
who came down to Earth as the twentieth century approached —
the souls weary of Christianity and those longing for it
— there is, for the most part, no self-recognition. The
“heretic-souls” do not recognise themselves.

By the
seventh and eighth centuries such traditions as had been kept alive
by the heretics who had become weary of Christianity had largely
disappeared. The knowledge was sustained in small circles only, where
until the twelfth
century — the middle of the Middle Ages —
it was preserved and cultivated. These circles were composed of
Teachers, divinely blessed Teachers, who still cultivated something
of this ancient knowledge of spiritual Christianity, cosmological
Christianity. There were some amongst them, too, who had directly
received communications from the past and in them a kind of
Inspiration arose; thus they were able to experience a reflection
— whether strong or faint, a true image — of what in the
first Christian centuries men had been able to behold under the
influence of a mighty Inspiration of the descent of the Sun God
leading to the Mystery of Golgotha.

And so two
main streams were there. One, as we have seen, is the stream which
derives directly from the heretical movements of the first Christian
centuries. Those belonging to it were fired still by what had been
alive in the Platonism of ancient Greece. So fired were they that
when through the tidings emanating from ancient times their inner
vision opened, they were always able, under the influence of a
genuine, albeit faint Inspiration, to perceive the descent of the
Christ to the Earth and to glimpse His work on the Earth. This was
the Platonic stream.

For the
other stream a different destiny was in store. To this stream
belonged those souls above all who had their last important
incarnation in the pre-Christian era and who had glimpsed
Christianity as something ordained for the future. The task of this
stream was to prepare the intellect for that epoch which had its
beginning in the first half of the fifteenth century. This was to be
the epoch when the human intellect would
unfold — the epoch of the Spiritual Soul. It
was prepared for by the Aristotelians, in contrast — but in
harmonious contrast — to what the Platonists had accomplished.
And those who propagated Aristotelian teachings until well into
the twelfth century were souls who had passed through their last
really important incarnation in ancient Pagan times, especially in
the world of Greek culture. And then — in the middle of the
Middle Ages, in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries — there
came about that great and wonderful spiritual understanding, if I may
call it so, between the Platonists and the Aristotelians. And
among these Platonists and Aristotelians were the leaders of those
who as the two groups of souls I have described, advanced the
Anthroposophical Movement.

By the
twelfth century a certain School had come into
being — as it were through inner necessity
— a School in which the afterglow of the old Platonic seership
lit up once again. It was the great and illustrious School of
Chartres. In this School were great teachers to whom the mysteries of
early Christianity were still known and in whose hearts and souls
this knowledge kindled a vision of the spiritual foundation of
Christianity. In the School of Chartres in France, where stands the
magnificent Cathedral, built with such profusion of detail,
there was a concentration, a gathering-together, as it were, of
knowledge that only shortly before had been widely scattered,
though confined to the small circles of which I have spoken. One of
the men with whom the School was able to forge a living link
was Peter of Compostella. He was able, with inspired understanding,
to bring the ancient spiritual Christianity to life again within his own
heart and soul. A whole succession of wonderful figures were teachers in
Chartres. Truly remarkable voices spoke of Christianity in the School of
Chartres in this twelfth century. There, for example, we find
Bernard of Chartres, Bernardus Sylvestris,
John of Salisbury, but above all the great
Alanus ab Insulis. Mighty teachers indeed! When they spoke in the
School of Chartres it was as if Plato himself, interpreting
Christianity, were working in person among them. They taught the
spiritual content and substance of Christianity. The writings
that have come down from them may seem full of abstractions to those
who read them to-day. But that is due simply to the abstract trend
that characterises modern thinking. The impulse of the Christ is
implicit in all the descriptions of the spiritual world contained in
the writings of these outstanding personalities. I will give
you an idea of how Bernardus Sylvestris and Alanus ab Insulis, above
all, taught their initiated pupils. Strange as it will seem to the
modern mind, such revelations were indeed given at that time to the
pupils of Chartres.

It was
taught: New life will come to Christianity. Its spiritual content and
essence will be understood once again when Kali Yuga, the Age of
Darkness, has come to an end and the dawn of a new Age breaks. And
with the year 1899 this has already come to pass for us who are
living at the present time; this is the great and mighty change that
was to come for humanity at the end of Kali Yuga, the mighty impulse
given two decades previously through the advent of Michael. This was
prophetically announced in the School of Chartres in the twelfth
century, above all by Bernardus Sylvestris and Alanus
ab Insulis. But these men did not teach in the
Aristotelian way, they did not teach by way of the intellect. They
gave their teachings entirely in the form of mighty, imaginative
pictures — pictures whereby the spiritual content of
Christianity became concretely real. But there were certain
prophetic teachings; and I should like by means of a brief extract to
give you an indication of one such teaching.

Alanus ab
Insulis spoke to the following effect to a narrow circle of his
initiated pupils: — ‘As we contemplate the universe
to-day, we still regard the Earth as the centre, we judge everything
from the Earth, as the centre. If the terrestrial conception which
enables us to unfold our pictures and our imaginations... if
this conception alone were to fertilise the coming centuries,
progress would not be possible for mankind. We must come to an
understanding with the Aristotelians who bring to humanity the
intellect which must then be spiritualised so that in the twentieth
century it may shine forth in a new and spiritual form among men. We,
in our time, regard the Earth as the centre of the Cosmos, we speak
of the planets circling around the Earth, we describe the whole
heaven of stars as it presents itself to physical eyes as if it
revolved around the Earth. But there will come one who will say: Let
us place the Sun at the spatial centre of the cosmic system! But when
he who will thus place the Sun at the centre of the spatial universe
has come, the picture of the world will become arid. Men will only
calculate the courses of the planets, will merely indicate the
positions of the heavenly bodies, speaking of them as gases, or
burning, luminous, physical bodies; they will know the starry
heavens only in terms of mathematical and mechanical laws. But this
arid picture of the world that will become widespread in the coming
times, has, after all, one thing — meagre, it is true,
yet it has it none the less. ... We look at the universe from
the Earth; he who will come will look at the universe from
the standpoint of the Sun. He will be like one who indicates
a “direction” only — the direction leading towards a
path of majestic splendour, fraught with most wonderful happenings
and peopled by glorious Beings. But he will give the direction
through abstract concepts only.’ (Thereby the Copernican
picture of the world was indicated, arid and abstract yet giving the
direction...) ‘For,’ said Alanus ab Insulis,
‘everything we present through the Imaginations that come to us
must pass away; it must pass away and the picture men now have of the
world must become altogether abstract, hardly more than a pointer
along a path strewn with wonderful memorials. For then, in the
spiritual world, there will be One who will use this pointer —
which for the purposes of world-renewal is nothing more than a means
of directive — in order that, together with the prevailing
intellectualism, he may then lay the foundations of the new
spirituality ... there will be One who will have this pointer as his
only tool. This One will be St. Michael! For Him the ground must be
made free; he must sow the path with new seed. And to that end,
nothing but lines must remain — mathematical lines!’

A kind of
magic breathed through the School of Chartres when Alanus ab Insulis
was giving such teachings to a few of his chosen pupils. It was as if
the ether-world all around were set astir by the surging waves of
this mighty Michael teaching.

And so a
spiritual atmosphere was imparted to the world. It spread across
Western Europe, down into Southern Italy, where there were many who
were able to receive it into themselves. In their souls something
arose like a mighty Inspiration, enabling them to gaze into the
spiritual world.

But in the
evolution of the world it is so that those who are initiated into the
great secrets of existence — as to a certain degree were Alanus
ab Insulis and Bernardus Sylvestris — such men know that it is
only possible to achieve this or that particular aim to a limited
extent. A man like Alanus ab Insulis said to himself: We, the
Platonists, must go through the gate of death; for the present we can
live only in the spiritual world. We must look down from the
spiritual world, leaving the physical world to those others whose
task it is to cultivate the intellect in the Aristotelian way. The
time has come now for the cultivation of the intellect. Late in his
life Alanus ab Insulis put on the habit of the Cistercian Order; he
became a Cistercian. And in the Cistercian Order many of these
Platonic teachings were contained. Those among the Cistercians
who possessed the deeper knowledge said to themselves:
Henceforward we can work only from the spiritual world; the field
must be relinquished to the Aristotelians.

These
Aristotelians were, for the most part, in the Order of the
Dominicans. And so in the thirteenth century the leadership of the
spiritual life in Europe passed over to them.

But a
heritage remained from men such as Peter of Compostella, Alanus ab
Insulis, Bernard of Chartres, John of Salisbury and that poet who
from the School of Chartres wrote a remarkable poem on the Seven
Liberal Arts. It took significant hold of the spiritual life of
Europe. What had come into being in the School of Chartres was so
potent that it found its way, for example, to the University of
Orleans. There, in the second half of the twelfth century, a great
deal penetrated in the form of teaching from what had streamed to the
pupils of Chartres through mighty pictures and words — words
as it were of silver — from the lips of Bernardus Sylvestris,
of Alanus ab Insulis.

The
spiritual atmosphere was so charged with this influence from Chartres
that the following incident
happened. — While a man, returning to Italy from
his ambassadorial post in Spain, was hastening homeward, he
received news of the overthrow of the Guelphs in Florence, and at the
same time suffered a slight sunstroke. In this condition his etheric
body loosened and gathered in what was still echoing through the
ether from the School of Chartres. And through what was thus wafted
to him in the ether, something like an Intuition came to him —
an Intuition such as had come to many human beings in the early
Christian centuries. First he saw outspread before him the earthly
world as it surrounds mankind, ruled over, not by ‘laws of
Nature,’ as the saying went in later times — but by the
great handmaiden of the Divine Demiurgos, by
Natura,
who in the first Christian centuries was the successor of Proserpine.
In those days men did not speak of abstract laws of Nature; to the
gaze of the Initiates, Being was implicit in what worked in
Nature as an all-embracing, divine Power. Proserpine, who divides her
time between the upper and the lower worlds, was presented in the Greek
Mysteries as the power ruling over Nature. Her successor in the early
Christian centuries was the Goddess Natura.

While
under the influence of the sunstroke and of what came to him from the
School of Chartres, this personality had gazed into the weaving life
of the Goddess Natura, and, allowing this Intuition to impress him
still more deeply, he beheld the working of the
Elements — Earth, Water, Air, Fire — as
this was once revealed in the ancient Mysteries; he beheld the
majestic weaving of the Elements. Then he beheld the mysteries of the
soul of man, he beheld those seven Powers of whom it was known that
they are the great celestial Instructors of the human race. —
This was known in the early Christian centuries. In those times men
did not speak, as they do to-day, of abstract teachings, where
something is imparted by way of concepts and ideas. In the first
Christian centuries men spoke of being instructed from the
spiritual world by the Goddesses Dialectica, Rhetorica, Grammatica,
Arithmetica, Geometria, Astrologia or Astronomia, and Musica. These
Seven were not the abstract conceptions which they have become
today; men gazed upon them, saw them before their eyes —
I cannot say in bodily reality but as Beings
of soul — and allowed themselves to be
instructed by these heavenly figures. Later on they no longer
appeared to men in the solitude of vision as the living Goddesses
Dialectica, Rhetorica and the rest, but in abstract forms, in
abstract, theoretic doctrines.

The
personality of whom I am now speaking allowed all that I have related
to work upon him. And he was led then into the planetary world,
wherein the mysteries of the soul of man are unveiled. Then in the
world of stars, having traversed the “Great Cosmic Ocean,”
he was led by Ovid, who after he had passed through the gate of death
had become the guide and leader of souls in the spiritual world. This
personality, who was Brunetto Latini, became the teacher of Dante.
What Dante learned from Brunetto Latini he then wrote down in his poem
the Divina Commedia. And so that mighty poem is a last reflection
of what lived on here and there as Platonism. It had flowed from the
lips of Sylvestris at the School of Chartres in the twelfth century
and was still taught by those who had been so inwardly fired by the
old traditions that the secrets of Christianity rose up within them
as Inspirations which they were then able to communicate to their
pupils through the word.

The
influence of Alanus ab Insulis, brought into the Cistercian Order,
passed over to the Dominicans. Then to the Dominicans fell the
paramount task: the cultivation of the intellect in the Aristotelian
sense. But there was an intervening period: the School of Chartres
had been at its prime in the twelfth
century — and in the thirteenth century,
in the Dominican Order, the intensive development of Aristotelian
Scholasticism began. The great teachers in the School of Chartres had
passed through the gate of death into the spiritual world and were
together for a time with the Dominicans who were beginning to come
down through birth and who, after they had descended,
established Aristotelianism on the Earth. We must therefore
think of an intervening period, when, as it were in a great heavenly
Council, the last of the great teachers of Chartres after they had
passed through the gate of death were together with those who, as
Dominicans, were to cultivate Aristotelianism — were together
with them before these latter souls came down to Earth. There,
in the spiritual world, the great “heavenly contract” was
made. Those who under the leadership of Alanus ab Insulis had arrived
in the spiritual world said to the Aristotelians who were about to
descend: It is not the time now for us to be on the Earth; for the
present we must work from here, from the spiritual world. In the near
future it will not be possible for us to incarnate on the Earth. It
is now your task to cultivate the intellect in the dawning epoch of
the Spiritual Soul. —

Then the
great Schoolmen came down and carried out the agreement that had been
reached between them and the last great Platonists of the School of
Chartres. One, for example, who had been among the earliest to
descend received a message through another who had remained with
Alanus ab Insulis in the spiritual world for a longer time than
he — that is to say, the younger man had
remained longer with the spiritual Individuality who had borne the
name ‘Alanus ab Insulis.’ The younger one who came down
later worked together with the older man to whom he conveyed the
message and thus within the Dominican Order began the preparation for
the Age of Intellectualism. The one who had remained somewhat longer
in the spiritual world with Alanus ab Insulis first put on the habit
of the Cistercian Order, exchanging it only later for that of the
Dominican. And so those who had once lived under the influence of
what came into the world with Aristotle, were now working on the
Earth, and up above, keeping watch, but in living connection with the
Aristotelians working on the Earth, were the Platonists who had been
in the School of Chartres. The spiritual world and the physical world
went hand in hand. Through the thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries it was as though Aristotelians and Platonists were
stretching out their hands to one another. And then, as time
went on, many of those who had come down in order to introduce
Aristotelianism into Europe were in the spiritual world with the
others once again.

But the
further course of evolution was such that the former leaders in the
School of Chartres, together with those who held the leading
positions in the Dominican Order, placed themselves at the head of
those who in the first half of the nineteenth century, in that mighty
super-sensible cult enacted in the pictures already indicated,
made preparation for the later anthroposophical stream. In the nature
of things, the first to come down again were those who had worked
more or less as Aristotelians; for
under the influence of intellectualism the time for
a new deepening of spirituality had not yet come. But there was
an unbreakable agreement which still works on. In accordance
with this agreement there must go forth from
the Anthroposophical Movement
something that must find its culmination before this century has
run its course. For over the Anthroposophical Society
a destiny hovers: many of those in the Anthroposophical Society
to-day will have to come down again to the Earth before, and at the
end of, the twentieth century, but united, then, with those who were
either the actual leaders in the School of Chartres or were pupils at
Chartres. And so, if civilisation is not to fall into utter decadence,
before the end of the twentieth century the Platonists of Chartres and
the Aristotelians who came later will have to be working together
on the Earth.

In the
future, the Anthroposophical Society must learn to understand, with
full consciousness, something of its karma. For a great deal that is
unable to come to birth — above all at the present time —
is waiting in the womb of the spiritual evolution of mankind. Also,
very many things to-day assume an entirely different form; but if one
can discern the symptoms, the inner meaning of what is thus
externalised becomes evident and the veils are drawn aside from much
that continues to live spiritually through the centuries. At this
point I may perhaps give a certain indication. Why, indeed, should it
not be given, now that the esoteric impulse is to flow through the
Anthroposophical Society? — I should like to speak of
something that will show you how observation of surrounding
circumstances opens up a vista into manifold connections.

When I
myself, in preparing for the Anthroposophical Movement, was led along
a particular path of destiny, this showed itself in a strange
connection with the Cistercian Order, which is closely connected, in
its turn, with Alanus ab Insulis.
[Let me say here, for those
who like to weave legends, that I, in respect of my own
individuality, am in no way to be identified with Alanus ab Insulis.
I only want to prevent legends arising from what I am putting before
you in an esoteric way. The essential point is that these things stem
from esoteric sources.]
In an altogether remarkable way my destiny
allowed me to discern through the external circumstances, such
spiritual connections as I have now described. Perhaps some of
you know the articles in the Goetheanum Weekly entitled,
Mein Lebensgang
(The Course of My Life).
I have spoken there of how in my youth I was sent, not to a
Gymnasium, but to a
Real Schule,
and only later acquired the classical
education given in the Gymnasia.
I can only regard this as a remarkable dispensation of my karma.
For in the town where I spent my youth the
Gymnasium was only a few steps away from the
Real Schule
and it was by a hair's breadth that I went, not to the
Gymnasium but to the
Real Schule.
If, however, at that time I had gone to
the Gymnasium in the town, I should have become a priest in
the Cistercian Order. Of that there is no doubt whatever. For at
this Gymnasium all the teachers were Cistercians. I was
deeply attracted to all these priests, many of whom were extremely
learned men. I read a great deal that they wrote and was profoundly
stirred by it. I loved these priests and the only reason why I passed
the Cistercian Order by was because I did not attend
the Gymnasium. Karma led me elsewhere ... but for all that I
did not escape the Cistercian Order. I have spoken of this too in my
autobiography. I was always of a sociable disposition, and in my
autobiography I have written of how, later on, in the house of Marie
Eugenie della Grazie in Vienna, I came into contact with
practically every theologian in the city. Nearly all of them
were Cistercian priests. And in this way a vista opened out, inducing
one to go back in time ... for me personally it came very naturally
... a vista leading through the stream of the Cistercian Order back
to the School of Chartres. For Alanus ab Insulis had been a
Cistercian. And strange to say, when, later on, I was writing my
first Mystery Play,
The Portal of Initiation,
I simply could not, for reasons of aesthetic
necessity, do otherwise than clothe the female characters on the
stage in a costume consisting of a long tunic and what is called a
stole. If you picture such a garment — a yellowish-white tunic
with a black stole and black girdle — there you have the robe
of the Cistercian Order. I was thinking at the time only of aesthetic
necessities, but this robe of the Cistercian Order came very
naturally before me. There you have one indication of how connections
unfold before those who are able to perceive the inner, spiritual
significance of symptoms appearing in the external world.

A
beginning was made at Christmas more and more to draw aside the veils
from these inner connections. They
must be brought to light, for mankind is waiting
for knowledge of inner reality, having for centuries
experienced only that of the outer, material world, and
civilisation to-day is in a terrible position. Among the many
indications still to be given, we shall, on the one side, have to
speak of the work of the School of Chartres, of how Initiates in this
School passed through the gate of death and encountered in the
spiritual world those souls who later wore the robe of the Dominicans
in order to spread Aristotelianism with its intellectuality and to
prepare with vigour and energy the epoch of the Spiritual (or
Consciousness) Soul. And so — let me put it in this way —
in the Anthroposophical Society we have Aristotelianism working on,
but in a spiritualised form, and awaiting its further
spiritualisation. Then, at the end of the century many of those who
are here to-day, will return, but they will be united, then, with
those who were the teachers in the School of Chartres. The aim of the
Anthroposophical Society is to unite the two elements. The one
element is the Aristotelianism in the souls who were for the most
part connected with the old Pagan wisdom, who were waiting for
Christianity and who retained this longing until, as Dominicans, they
were able through the activity of the intellect to promulgate
Christianity. They will be united with souls who had actually
experienced Christianity in the physical world and whose
greatest teachers gathered together in the School of Chartres. Up to
now, these teachers of Chartres have not incarnated, although in my
contact with the Cistercian Order I was able again and again to come
across incorporations of many of
those who were in the School of Chartres. In the Cistercian Order one
met many a personality who was not a reincarnation of a pupil
of Chartres but in whose life there were periods when — for
hours, for days — he was inspired by some such Individuality
from the School of Chartres. It was a matter, in these cases, of
incorporation, not incarnation. And wonderful things were
written, of which one could only
ask: who is the actual author? The author was not the
monk who in the Cistercian Order at that time wore the
yellowish-white robe with the black stole and girdle, but the real
author was the personality who for hours, days or weeks had come down
into the soul of one of these Cistercian Brothers. Much of this
influence worked on in essays or writings little known in
literature. — I myself once had a remarkable conversation
with a Cistercian who was an extremely learned man. I have mentioned
it, too, in
The Course of My Life.
We were going away from a gathering, and
speaking about the Christ problem. I propounded my ideas which were
the same, essentially, as those I give in my lectures. He became
uneasy while I was speaking, and said: ‘We may possibly hit
upon something of the kind; we shall not allow ourselves to think
such things.’ He spoke in similar terms about other problems of
Christology. But then we stopped for a short time — the moment
stands most vividly before me — it was where the Schottenring
and the Burgring meet in Vienna, on the one side the Hofburg and on
the other the Hotel de France and the Votiv-Kirche ... we stopped for
a minute or two and the man said: “I should like you to come
with me. I will give you a book from my library in which something
remarkable is said on the subject you have been speaking
about.” I went with him and he gave me a book about the Druses.
The whole circumstances of our conversation in connection with the
perusal of this book led me to the knowledge that when, having
started from Christology, I went on to speak of repeated earthly
lives, this deeply learned man was, as it were, emptied mentally in a
strange way, and when he came to himself again remembered only that
he possessed a book about the Druses in which something was said
about reincarnation. He knew about it only from this one book. He was
a Hofrat (Councillor) at the University of Vienna and was so erudite
that it was said of him: “Hofrat N. knows the whole world and
three villages besides.” ... so great was his learning —
but in his bodily existence he knew only that in a book about the
Druses something was said about repeated earthly lives. This is an
example of the difference between what men have in their
subconsciousness and what flows as the spiritual world through their
souls. — And then a noteworthy episode occurred. I was once
giving a lecture in Vienna. The same person was there and after the
lecture he made a remark which could only be interpreted in the sense
that at this moment he had complete understanding of a certain man
belonging to the present age and of the relation of this man to his
earlier incarnation. And what the person said on that occasion about
the connection between two earthly lives, was correct, was not false.
But through his intellect he understood nothing; it simply came from
his lips.

By this I
want only to indicate how spiritual movements reach into the
immediate present. But what to-day shines in as it were through many
tiny windows must in the future become a unity through that
connection between the leaders of the School of Chartres and the
leading spirits of Scholasticism, when the spiritual revival whereby
intellectualism itself is lifted to the Spirit, sets in at the end of
the twentieth century. To make this possible, let human beings of the
twentieth century not throw away their opportunities! But everything
to-day depends upon free will, and whether the two allied groups will
be able to descend for the re-spiritualisation of culture in the
twentieth century — this depends very specially upon
whether the Anthroposophical Society understands how to cultivate
Anthroposophy with the right devotion.

So much
for to-day. — We have heard of the connection of the
anthroposophical stream with the deep mystery of the epoch which
began with the manifestation of the Christ in the Mystery of Golgotha
and has developed in the way I have described. More will be said in
the second lecture.